Statue of LibertyThe Statue of Liberty arrived in New York Harbor on June 19, 1885. The monument was a gift of friendship from the people of France to the people of the United States, intended to commemorate the centennial of the American Declaration of Independence, some ten years earlier. Sculptor Frederic-Auguste Bartholdi's Liberty Enlightening the World stands more than 300 feet high, and has come to symbolize freedom and democracy to the nation and to the world.
The statue is constructed of copper sheets which are assembled on a framework of steel supports designed by Eugene-Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc and Alexandre-Gustave Eiffel. For transit to America, the figure was disassembled into 350 pieces and packed in 214 crates. Four months later, it was reassembled on Bedloe's Island (renamed Liberty Island in 1956). On October 28, 1886, President Grover Cleveland dedicated the Statue of Liberty before thousands of spectators. Since the 1892 opening of nearby Ellis Island Immigration Station, Bartholdi's Liberty has welcomed more than 12,000,000 immigrants to America. Emma Lazarus's famous lines engraved on the statue's pedestal are linked to our conception of the statue Americans call "Lady Liberty:" http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/today/jun19.html |
